Benjamin S. Petty
Founder & Engineer · Seattle, WA · (206) 353-9874 benjamin.s.petty@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/benjaminpetty · github.com/benpetty
Founder and senior engineer with 24+ years of building products end-to-end — from the 2001 launch of an independent Pacific Northwest apparel brand through eight years as a senior engineer at SaaS companies (Tomorrow Ideas, acq. Ethos Life; Crowd Cow; U.S. LawShield). Currently running four consumer-facing businesses across cannabis, music streaming, apparel, and nonprofit work — co-founder on Northwest Local Cannabis, solo founder/engineer on the others, owning design, engineering, deploy, and operations end-to-end.
Current Ventures · 2021–Present
Audeos · Founder & Engineer · 2023–Present
Multi-channel live-streaming radio platform. Each channel loops a curated playlist of pre-transcoded audio, broadcast in sync to every listener.
- Realtime engine on Phoenix LiveView with one
ChannelEngineGenServer per active channel under a custom loop-engine state machine; PubSub fan-out keyed by stable channel id; lookahead/cursor model gives listeners a visible “next N” plan. - HLS pipeline: ffmpeg transcoder converts uploaded audio into rolling segments; Cloudflare R2 for object storage; MediaMTX RTMP relay; Oban background workers handle transcode, cleanup, and database backups.
- Solo deploy on Fly.io with telemetry-driven incident response, Sentry integration with PII scrubbing, and a documented postmortem-driven invariants culture.
- Marketing site (audeos.com): Next.js 16 + Contentful with build-time Spotify playlist integration and client-side Fuse.js search, deployed to GitHub Pages.
- Stack: Elixir · Phoenix · LiveView · Postgres · Oban · Cloudflare R2 · MediaMTX · Sentry · Fly.io · Next.js · Contentful
Northwest Local Cannabis · Co-Founder · 2021–Present
Co-founder of Northwest Local Cannabis, a WA i502 licensed craft cannabis producer/processor. Cultivator-operator across grow, tech, brand, and distribution.
- Astro 6 SSG with Sanity CMS as single source of truth for strains, products, blog posts, retailer partners, and site settings; deployed to GitHub Pages.
- Sanity content publish triggers GitHub Actions rebuild via
workflow_dispatchwebhook for ~1–2 minute end-to-end propagation. - Custom Claude Code skills (
/new-strain,/new-product,/new-post,/audit-content,/describe-assets) automate the content workflows. - 21+ age-gate overlay; build-time GROQ queries; static OG/JSON-LD generation.
- Stack: Astro · Sanity · TypeScript · GitHub Actions
The North West Clothing · Founder · 2001–Present
Independent Pacific Northwest apparel brand specializing in design, decoration, and distribution. Founded 2001; relaunched in 2026 on a modern stack with print-on-demand fulfillment.
- Original era (2001–2015): generated up to $5K/day in online sales through targeted campaigns; up to $20K gross revenue per weekend at sponsored events and festivals; trained employees across retail, warehouse, and screen-printing operations; sustained inventory levels via demand forecasting from sales analytics.
- 2026 relaunch: custom Shopify OS 2.0 theme (Dawn-based) with Vite + SCSS + Alpine.js build pipeline; TypeScript CLI built on Shopify Admin GraphQL and Printful REST for POD fulfillment; conversational content management via custom Claude Code skills.
- Stack: Shopify · Liquid · Vite · TypeScript · Alpine.js · SCSS · Printful API
Rooted Community · Engineer · 2024–Present
Marketing site for a small Washington nonprofit serving system-impacted BIPOC community members in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties.
- Astro 6 + Sanity v6 with editorial design system (Newsreader serif + Inter, custom cream/forest/clay palette); self-hosted variable fonts; build-time GROQ only.
- 8 routes plus dynamic program-detail pages; pages render gracefully with sparse fields so the org can publish and fill in over time.
- CI pipeline: typecheck + audit on PR, full deploy chain on
main, nightly audit run; lychee link checking and Lighthouse audits in CI. - Stack: Astro · Sanity · TypeScript · GitHub Actions
Engineering Experience
U.S. LawShield · Senior Software Development Engineer (Contract) · Sep 2022 – Aug 2025
PHP · Laravel · Docker · Kubernetes · AWS EKS · Helm · React · Next.js · Tailwind · GitLab
- Maintained backwards compatibility with the legacy API while building multiple new backend services and migrating a poorly-structured monolith into modern, scalable service architecture supporting continued product growth.
- Partnered with the DevOps lead to containerize applications and upgrade the CI/CD pipelines using Docker, Kubernetes, AWS EKS, Helm charts, and GitLab.
- Added automated unit tests and test coverage to previously untested or manually-tested code bases.
- Built a React-based employee dashboard used by customer support agents, admins, attorneys, and executives, with role-based access control (RBAC) for permissions.
Crowd Cow · Software Engineer (FTE) · May 2021 – Dec 2021
Ruby on Rails · Vue.js · Sass · Redis · MySQL · Docker · Heroku · RSpec
- Redesigned the legacy credit-card processing module, raising subscription payment acceptance from 70% to 90%. Categorized failed-charge decline codes from the payment processor and strategically targeted retry scenarios — for example, timing retries on insufficient-funds declines for likely account-replenishment windows.
- On-call rotation for site reliability and production incident response; primary point of contact for team support tickets.
Tomorrow Ideas (acq. Ethos Life) · Mar 2017 – May 2021
Early-stage fintech startup; acquired by Ethos Life. Joined as contract project lead for the public launch and grew through promotion to SDE II over 4+ years.
Software Development Engineer II (FTE) · Aug 2020 – May 2021
TypeScript · React · Redux · Node · Express · Tailwind · Redis · Docker · GitHub Actions · AWS · Jest
- Engineering project lead for a complete UI/UX redesign of the app’s web experience, pivoting from a native-app-funnel model to a web-centric desktop-friendly product built from the ground up.
- Collaborated with external partners and engineers on exclusive integrations with Tomorrow’s app and APIs.
Software Engineer (FTE) · Aug 2017 – Jul 2020
Python · Django · PHP · Laravel · React · Redux · Sass · Redis · PostgreSQL · Docker · TravisCI · AWS · PHPUnit
- Led refactoring projects on the monolithic API codebase, converting key modules into containerized services; built efficient, reliable CI/CD pipelines for all backend services and web projects.
- Built a custom admin dashboard with on-demand features for executive, BI, marketing, product, and customer-support teams.
- Identified and repaired bottlenecks in page-load and server response times.
- Mentored junior engineers via regular pair-programming and code review.
Software Engineer (Contract) · Mar 2017 – Jul 2017
Python · Django · Wagtail CMS · React · Redux · PostgreSQL · CircleCI · AWS · Pytest
- Project lead for the launch of Tomorrow’s marketing site and flagship web app. Owned all web-development tasks for the company’s public product announcement and initial release.
Instrument · Full Stack Engineer (Contract) · Jun 2022 – Sep 2022
Docker · Node · WordPress · MySQL · GitHub Actions · WPEngine · Jest
- Delivered a complete website redesign for the nonprofit BlackSpace alongside the agency’s design and dev teams.
- Built a containerized dev environment to streamline frontend onboarding; wrote scripts to sync content between remote and local databases.
- Set up custom CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and WPEngine.
Technical
Languages TypeScript · JavaScript · Elixir · Python · Ruby · PHP · Bash
Frontend Astro · Next.js · React · Phoenix LiveView · Alpine.js · Tailwind · SCSS
Backend Phoenix · Django · Express · Rails · Laravel
Data PostgreSQL · MySQL · Redis · MongoDB · Cloudflare R2
Infrastructure AWS (EKS) · Fly.io · Docker · Kubernetes · Helm · GitHub Actions · GitLab CI
Content & commerce Sanity · Contentful · WordPress · Shopify (Admin GraphQL) · Printful
Practices SOLID · Service-Oriented Architecture · Test-Driven Development · RBAC · CI/CD · Postmortem-driven invariants
Education
International Business & Trade, AAS · Highline College, Des Moines WA · 2018
President’s List · Vice President’s Honor Roll · Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society